Page 9 of Never Bound

But as she stood there, Corey turned up his volume as if twisting a knob, loud enough for startled heads to turn up and down the corridor. “I mean, everyone here already knew you couldn’t cut it in college. That you were a stupid, spoiled bimbo only here to snag a rich boyfriend after Daddy went crazy and pissed away his fortune. And this only proves how pathetic you are. You know, you might as well just use that exam for toilet paper and turn it in. You’ll probably get more questions right that way. Maybe try using an actual tutor next time instead of a slave.”

“Better a slave for a tutor than an asshole for a boyfriend,” I snapped, turning around, unable to disguise how violently I was shaking. “Not that that term will ever have anything to do withyou.Don’t talk to me anymore.”

“You think I’m blind?!” He caught me by the arm again. I jerked away as everything became a blur. He’d wanted people to stare, but now it was backfiring on him. Heads were turning. A crowd closed in, and he had no choice but to loosen his grip. But he kept shouting as I darted into the safety of the lecture hall. “I know what this is really all about!”

In the back of the freezing hall, I regarded the chalkboard in a stiff, unseeing stare, shaking too hard to even macerate an eraser or two as usual. Exams and answer sheets trickled their way to the back of the hall courtesy of a pack of grim-looking TAs.

Fuck Corey.I could blame him for shattering my confidence, but the fact was, I’d never had any to begin with.

Ithadmade sense, for a time. It really had. The lecture notes, the practice problems, the hours and hours my unlikely tutor had spent helping me spin those arrays of infuriating little carbon and oxygen molecules around like cogs and gears until they miraculously reassembled themselves into something that worked for my brain. But now it was gone, collapsed into one terrifying, soul-sucking singularity.

Panic set in. I could see it all laid out in front of me like some tortuous map to hell. After all that had happened, all the work we’d done, I wasstillgoing to fail, lose my scholarship, and drop out, but now it was even worse. Yes, Mr. Supportive had said exactly what he was supposed to say, and it was very sweet and all, but seriously, how could I possibly ever face him again if I failed? To explain that he’d wasted hours of his life, of which he had so few free to begin with, trying to fix a hopeless dummy? I should have known better than to ever involve him in this mess.

Watching the fear and anxiety seizing my classmates’ faces as they stared down at the exams landing in front of them was no help. Helpless, my breathing grew quick and shallow, a sure sign of an impending freak-out. I reached into my leather schoolbag for my study notes, hoping that staring at something familiar to me might at least help get my memory working again in the seconds before the paper landed on my desk.

As I shook out the papers, I was surprised to see something bright and strange flutter to the floor from where it had been lodged in my bag. I snatched it up greedily: a wildflower.

A sprig of blush-orange globe mallow, one of the only flowers that bloomed in the desert in the fall, its petals shedding delicately in my hand.

And on top of the notes, a sticky note with a message in a by-now-familiar spiky scrawl.

Hey, put down the notes and breathe.You got this.

x

1.We lived hidden, content, door closed/Devouring love, good forbidden fruit/My mouth had not asked a thing/That your heart had not already answered.

4

HIM

Asifithadn’tbeen tricky enough to find a wildflower in the desert in November, I discovered that morning that my “reward” would be spending the next few days building a wire fence around the prickly pears to keep the javelinas from digging up and eating them. The look I must have given the housekeeper when she told me and the little cluck of her tongue in response said it all. What, did His Royal Highness expect that just because he had, against all logic, gotten in the master’s good graces with his little performance the other night, he’d never have to do this kind of thing again?

Well, no, of course not, but I’d certainlyhoped.

“I’m sorry,”she’d said over a plate of toast in the slaves’ common area that morning.“But the master says it needs to be done if we want any cactuses left at all. Plus, the gardener is gone, the landscaping service isn’t available this week, and heaven knows I’m not going to do it. He expects it to be done by the time he gets back.”

“Back from where?”

“He’s had to fly to LA unexpectedly to meet with his lawyers,”she said.“The valet went with him. And if you’re wondering why no one told you, it’s because I only found out late last night. And by the way, if you’re looking at the master being away as an opportunity to get away with murder, forget it.”

It must have been screamingly obvious how rapidly the gears in my brain were turning. But as always, that was nothing a charming smile and a witty remark couldn’t fix.“I promise, no murder. Petty larceny atmost.”

I received the standard will-never-admit-to-being-charmed eye roll in return. This was too easy. Hell, there was almost no limit to what the master’s absence might offer the opportunity to accomplish. Having as much sex as possible with his daughter, while clearly the most enjoyable part of it was only the start.

Now if only I could figure a way out of building this goddamn fence.

The housekeeper promptly handed me a sheet of detailed instructions on where to place each post.“Look, if you make solid progress on this, I won’t tell anyone if you want to take it easy for the next few nights. The girl, too. I’ll take on the evenings myself, and then we can all enjoy a good night’s sleep,”she said.“If it helps, we had one half-built last year before it washed away in the monsoons, so most everything you need should be out in the shed already. If you run out of wire, let me know and I’ll arrange to have some delivered.”

Her words were mild, but her meaning was clear:Just try to weasel your way out of this, smart guy, I dare you.Oh well. It didn’t soundtoohard, and I’d certainly been ordered to do similar things in the past. Maybe I could think of it as an exercise in landscape architecture.

The first step—besides finding out just what the hell javelinas were, to which the answer was, no joke, some kind of wild pig—was trudging outside and surveying the garden, where the porcine invaders had already been hard at work, strewing divots and mounds of overturned dirt all along the perimeter of the property.

With a sigh, I grabbed a spade and whatever other useful tools I could scavenge from the shed, then searched in vain for some gloves, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the gardener had snatched them when he’d left out of pure spite. I then turned my attention to the stacks of wooden stakes and heavy bales of woven wire stacked against the wall, which, given that the wheel on the barrow was currently broken and needed parts—something else I blamed the gardener for—I would have to drag across the garden individually.

Two hours later, the mercury was still soaring, and my progress consisted of a series of holes dug eight inches into the ground and two stakes, one of them draped with a disorganized and bloody mass of wire, which had sliced into my hands in a dozen places already, the blood running down my wrists in thin streaks. Now I wrestled artlessly and stubbornly to unroll another bale and drag it across the yard, muttering curses to myself in Luxembourgish.

Despite the housekeeper’s offer, it looked like I was going to be working overtime if I wanted to make any progress on this thing at all by tonight—when I hoped to make the most of my time with Louisa when she returned from campus after taking her exam, which should be taking place right about now.

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